Friday, October 31, 2008

School Daze at the Daily News

Remember the old left wing ditty? "Daily News. daily blues, pick up a copy any time you choose. Seven little pennies in the newsboy's hands, send you right off to never never land." Well, it appears that never never land is right where a critical story on the city schools was sent-after the story had been already uploaded to the paper's website.

Here's the Gotham Schools take on the matter-done in her usual hard hitting style by Elizabeth Green: "Parents are outraged about those fat cat educrats at Tweed Courthouse, at least five of whom earned between $1.7 and $6 million in salaries and investments last year, the Daily News was supposed to report in today’s newspaper — but didn’t, after a late-night move killed the story."

This, on the heels of Juan Gonzales' piece on the expensive couriers being used at Tweed, was apparently too much for the Kleinemen to take: "Mr. Zuckerman, can you take a call from the chancellor?" As Green tells us: "My understanding is that the story was slated to run today both in the newspaper and online, but then got scrapped late last night. This appears to have happened because of an outside intervention, since the story had already been uploaded to the paper’s Web site, meaning it had gone all the way through the editing process. Word of the decision to kill the story — not postpone or delay or just put on the Web, but kill — came to both print and Web designers, who dutifully destroyed it, except for one thing: the Web headline, which was still visible this morning."

The story was slated to tell us the following, as one commenter at the Gotham blog culled it from Google News:

"Klein with Garth Harries, who oversees creation of new schools and boasts investments of up to $6 million. Also pictured with Klein is former aide Kristen Kane.City schoolkids and their families may be feeling the pinch of hard times, but at least five senior DOE advisers had salaries and investments that totaled between $1.7 and $6 million each last year…Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf, who once ran the controversial for-profit education company Edison Schools, had between $1.8 million and $3.3 million in …The department’s chief operating officer, PhoteineAnagnostopoulos, was sitting on stocks and bonds worth anywhere from $2.2 million to $4.8 million. “It exposes a degree of insularity in this administration,” said David Bloomfield, a parent member of the Chancellor’s Citywide Council on High Schools."Warning to the News: you can't keep doing this or you'll end up like the LA Times, ridiculed for withholding important information that doesn't fit your political agenda. And as the mayoral school control fight heats up, the folks will know who's telling the truth, and who's playing footsie with his billionaire buddy.